Digital innovation in recent years has transformed the way businesses deliver services to their customers. Be it healthcare, finance, e-commerce or agriculture, technology is changing the rules of the game. While agile organisations in the private sector have been quick to adopt new technologies, others have taken time to recognise its benefits.

Bangalore, India’s IT capital has led the way by setting examples that enable government departments to leverage digital tools to cater to its citizens’ needs. For instance, today, citizens have an option of reporting crime/traffic violations through social media platforms. In July 2015, the city’s police said that residents could use twitter’s live streaming app, Periscope to record videos of crimes and traffic violations. Through this, the police can trace the location of a crime and respond in near real time. The police went a step further and announced last March that they would accept complaints via Whatsapp and SMS! Imagine the amount of time, effort and costs saved for the government and gratification delivered to Bangalore’s citizens! This valuable data collected by the traffic department can be stored on the cloud in the form of violation records, helping the police all over the country identify repeat defaulters and take immediate action when required.

With the world’s second largest population, India faces several challenges across cities, towns, villages and across different income groups. Although, issues pertaining to healthcare, banking, governance and other fronts which are either expensive or too large to address, continued to loom. However, mobile, and hence, digital being so pervasive, provided the government with the ideal platform to bring about a change in governance.

In Sweden, parents receive digital reminders about upcoming health checkups and vaccinations for their children. In contrast, India continues to lag behind in providing primary healthcare to its citizens. An estimated 600 million people, particularly in rural areas, have little or no access to healthcare facilities. Via mobile devices, the government can introduce innovative e-healthcare facilities that enable doctors to attend to patient remotely and suggest solutions based on digitised documents and tele-conferences. But, having said that, the government does seem to be using digital as an information dissemination system effectively. For instance, information on Pulse Polio programme used to be communicated via newspapers and televisions earlier but now, the government simply sends text message broadcasts to educate people.

In sectors like agriculture, the government can leverage technology to deliver smart weather information to farmers and even set up e-mandis (online markets) to increase incomes, and reduce subsidies and crop loss compensations that the government pays out.

IBM has an array of cognitive solutions that can help governments enhance the quality of citizens’ lives across a range of government responsibilities: public safety, defense, national intelligence, social engagement, cyber security, and banking to name a few. Pro-active governments are using digital to try and respond faster to citizen needs, and build an infrastructure where citizen services are available 24/7. With Digital India, the country is fast transforming from a data poor to a data-rich nation. With the right technology, this data can be intelligently analysed and applied to derive insights that help solve problems for a majority of citizens.

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As the Special Chief Secretary & IT Advisor to the Chief Minister - Govt. of Andhra Pradesh, J A Chowdary is all for chasing new growth horizons, pursuing radically different development approaches and outguessing technology trends that will shape the future.

As the Special Chief Secretary & IT Advisor to the Chief Minister - Govt. of Andhra Pradesh, J A Chowdary is all for chasing new growth horizons, pursuing radically different development approaches and outguessing technology trends that will shape the future.